


oh, mother (can you keep them in the dark for life)

by rainbowshoes



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst Dark Brew, Gen, Not Happy, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Read at Your Own Risk, no happy ending, tags will spoil the ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 06:13:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshoes/pseuds/rainbowshoes
Summary: depressed after the civil war and having lost everything, tony turns to alcohol to comfort himself, and he builds something - a new AI he dubs MOTHER. he gives her a body. and she makes him happy. so very, very happy.For the Tony Stark Bingo 2019K5: AlcoholismA4: Old GhostsT5: Whump





	1. K5: Alcoholism

**Author's Note:**

> "mother" by danzig - inspo for the title  
> comments modded, no anon comments, and only users may view  
> not sorry

Tony slumped onto the couch in his workshop and loosened his tie. He didn't bother leaning back and seeking comfort he knew he wouldn't find. He bent over himself instead, holding his head in his hands. This was it, then. The end. 

After what the media had cottoned on to and dubbed the Avengers’ civil war, and after Pepper decided she couldn't handle Tony trying so solve SI's problems, his own problems, and now the world's problems in a different way - funny, how she'd finally let the Iron Man issue die, but when he pushed for the Accords and then had to  _ keep pushing _ to get them right, she decided she couldn't handle him again. Anyway. It was finished. 

The Avengers were gone. Pepper was gone. The tower was gone. It was just Tony. Rhodey was crippled (his fault, always his fault). Vision wasn't really… around. Tony knew why he kept vanishing, but he didn't bother to track him down. It wasn't worth it. Better to let Vision go, to let him be free. That was how the adage went, right? If you loved something, you had to let it go and hope it came back. Well, Vision always came back - so far - but he was less and less  _ back _ and more and more melancholy.

Tony wondered how long it would take before Vision finally decided that coming back wasn't worth it anymore. How long it would take before Rhodey realized he didn't have to stay at the compound because the braces gave him everything he needed in terms of mobility. 

It didn't matter how long it would take. In the end, it would happen. Tony would be alone again. He should be used to that by now, but somehow he wasn't. 

He shoved his hand under the couch and up under the ripped liner. There, exactly where he'd hidden it, was the bottle of scotch he'd stashed ages ago, back before he'd really stopped drinking. It was the emergency bottle. 

Tony dragged it into the dim light and ignored FRIDAY's quiet, worried query. He didn't want to deal with her right now. That was probably unfair of him, but it was true. He didn't have any fight left in him. 

And so he unscrewed the cap and put the bottle to his lips.

A few swallows in, and he was already feeling the first swimmy, floaty sensations of a buzz. It was pleasant. He smirked to himself. He knew exactly why he'd given this up, but look how that had turned out. It wasn't worth it in the end. 

Was anything, in the end? 

He'd saved himself in that fucking cave. He'd saved himself from his own tech. JARVIS had saved him from the ocean and the mansion crumbling around him. Pepper had saved him from Killian. He'd saved New York from the WSC and their nuke. He'd helped with the Chitauri. He'd  _ caused  _ ULTRON, so could he even take credit for helping to stop him? Probably not.

He hadn't been able to save Rhodey. He hadn't stopped himself from dragging a fucking fourteen year old kid into a fight he had no part in. He hadn't been able to save anyone - not even himself, after Rogers and Barnes were finished with him. FRIDAY had done that. 

What did not drinking ever solve? He'd stopped for Pepper, but she… hadn't noticed, not at first. She'd accused him of being drunk or high when he was manic or depressed, binging for days on end in the workshop with no sleep until he was long past the point of hearing and seeing things. And when she'd finally noticed, it hadn't mattered much. She still left, anyway.

There wasn't anything holding him back, not now. So he drank. 

He knew he was an alcoholic. Alcoholism ran in the family, after all. But what did it matter? It wasn't like he had a kid to scream at and smack around. He only ever hurt himself when he was drunk. Mostly. 

Pepper had said, once, that he was hurting her with his drinking. It was emotional manipulation on her part, though. He knew that now, even if it had worked perfectly at the time. He'd put down the bottle and he'd gone to AA meetings and he'd done… so well. For a time. Not that she'd noticed, and it had hurt even more when she looked him in the eye and told him he was lying to her face about it. Not that he blamed her for that, not exactly. But it had still hurt. 

But he could go back to his shameful, alcoholic ways now that no one was around to stop him. Now that no one was around to care.

Sure, Rhodey probably cared. But he probably also expected this sort of thing. Tony knew he should feel guilty for letting Rhodey down, but fuck. He'd already let Rhodey down so many times… What was one more thing to add to the list? 

Besides. He felt too much relief as the drunken haze slipped over him. His thoughts finally… slowed. They never stopped, not really. But they slowed, and rather than cascading and spiraling and doubling-tripling-quadrupling, they crashed into one another like billiards on a pool table. One in twenty might make it through clearly. Good odds, for someone like him.

Tony tipped the bottle back again and frowned when nothing else came from it. He held the bottle up and squinted at it. Empty. Dammit. 

He didn't have anything else in the workshop. He knew that. He doubted there was even anything else on the compound. Rhodey had taken Tony's sobriety seriously. 

He needed someone to fetch more for him. He couldn't call Happy. Happy had gone back to LA with Pepper. Not that she needed the protection, not with Extremis, but Pepper wasn't a fighter. Tony had let them go and wished them well. Happy would take good care of her.

That still left him with the problem of how to get more booze without going to get it himself. He couldn't drive in this condition. He wasn't quite that stupid, these days.

He eyed Dum-E and U and thought, wistfully, that it would be nice if he could build someone to go on booze runs for him. And food runs. And to refill his coffee. Any number of things, really. But he didn't want an actual person. The idea of having another personal assistant made him feel slightly nauseous. He didn't want real people anywhere near him. Real people were always bound to leave him behind. Look at Vision. He'd turned into a real boy and fucked right off. 

Tony couldn't really blame Vision. After all, who would  _ want _ to spend their time with a middle-aged, narcissistic, alcoholic, billionaire,  _ dick _ of a human being? Tony certainly didn't want to spend any time with himself. That was half the reason he drank in the first place. 

But then. There was the hint of an idea. Just a niggling little thought. 

Tony stood and made his way to his biggest workstation before the thought could vanish, latching onto the squirmy little thing with both hands and reeling it in, forcing it into submission. 

Life Model Decoys were still ages out from perfection, but… maybe…

He grabbed a stylus and began to sketch his idea into bright blue holographic lines of semi-reality. 

If he could solve some of the problems he'd seen with the interface in the LMD dolls, upload an AI - not FRIDAY, he'd have to code a new one - and then let it run a trial… 

It was a possibility, not only for the world of science and technology, but for  _ him _ . He'd never argued the charges of narcissism because they were true. Everything he did was, in some way, done for himself. It always came back to benefit him. And this would, too, even if it might help others, it would help him  _ first _ . 

He'd built JARVIS because he'd needed someone to talk to. He'd built Dum-e because he'd needed someone to help him in his workshop. He'd build this LMD because he needed both - and because he needed someone to help him keep his life together without involving another human person ever again.


	2. A4: Old Ghosts

It turned out, LMD shells were fairly simplistic. They were far easier to render and fabricate than his Iron Man armors, anyway. The problem was, he hadn't known who to make the LMD resemble. Not himself, certainly, though that would have been handy in other situations. It was worth considering later, but not now. 

Right now, he was tweaking the base code he'd created when designing his other AIs. It was easier to start from something and modify than to start from nothing, after all. So he added subroutines regarding care and a primary directive that involved his happiness, not his well-being. Let FRIDAY keep the well-being aspect. This new AI would exist only to see that he was happy, and Tony could admit that he needed that.

Everything else was crumbling around him at an alarming rate. Why not build this one thing designed only with his happiness in mind? It wouldn't matter if what made him happy wasn't good for his health. He gave permissions to this AI that would override FRIDAY, not that FRIDAY would appreciate that. 

It wasn't until he found himself adding in the subroutines that included cooking his favorite meals and making his coffee exactly the way he liked it that he realized - he missed Ana. 

Ana had cared, primarily, for his happiness. She'd give him a cookie before dinner, even if Jarvis had said no only ten seconds before. She'd dry his tears and kiss his aches and bruises and scrapes and tell him that it didn't matter if Howard thought he should be bigger, stronger, smarter - he was perfect the way he was. 

Ana. 

Tony broke down in tears as he remembered her, tired enough and still drunk enough that he didn't care that he was sobbing over a ghost. 

But he couldn't do this to Ana. He couldn't make her like he'd made JARVIS. 

He did want a mother, though. His own had been… so very distant. 

He found himself adding in the ability to play piano, the ability to sing his own mother's favorite songs. He still remembered that she loved Chanel No. 5, and that she loved Versace but  _ hated  _ Gucci. She smoked Virginia Slims, on the rare occasion that she smoked. She preferred her simple pearls and the slim, simple engagement ring with the single princess cut diamond Howard had given her to the giant, heavy, monstrosity he'd later presented her with on their twentieth anniversary. She liked coffee and toast with butter, cinnamon, and jam for breakfast. She didn't eat lunch, but she had tea everyday at three, and then their big dinner every night around nine. She'd known every rule and form of etiquette there was to know, and she never made smiling and greeting five hundred people in a night seem like a bore or a chore, but rather offered everyone their own little custom greeting and polite chit chat before sending them away. 

He hair had been platinum blonde, then it had slivered. She'd never been a particularly small woman, not rail-thin and twiggy like so many women were today. He remembered listening to her complain about it often enough - though it wasn't ever presented as a complaint, but rather as concern.  _ Aren't those poor girls eating enough? Just think of all the damage they must be doing to their bodies to stay so pitifully thin. Tony, dear, remember, you must always feed any woman you bring home. She shouldn't be so thin, or she'll never be able to bear the weight of your name and duties _ . He'd taken it for a joke, at the time, a way for her to be racy in her own way. He knew now that she wasn't joking in the slightest. Pepper was the strongest woman he'd ever met - including Romanov and Hill - and yet she was rail-thin. And she hadn't been able to bear his burdens with him. (He would never ask anyone to bear them for him.)

She'd loved classical music, but he had a wild streak in her, too. She'd listened to Tony's rock and she'd been an avid fan of The Beatles. In the New York house, her original, signed, albums were still hung in shadow boxes in the library. She'd rarely done things for Tony, but she'd read to him when he was sick. She'd read  _ The Chronicles of Narnia _ and  _ The Fellowship of the Ring _ . They'd watched  _ Star Trek _ together, and he remembered the time she confessed that she often felt like Amanda where Howard was Sarek. Tony always figured that made him Spock, but then he'd discovered his dad wanted him to be Kirk, instead, and that had been so hard. 

Maria didn't garden, but she loved flowers and arrangements. She did them herself, a lot of the time. She'd pick out new furniture and paint or wallpaper for the house every five years or so. New china, new silverware, new everything. Design had been one of her passions, and she'd had a marvelous taste for it. 

She drove like a bat out of hell the few times Tony remembered her driving any place at all. She liked baseball and preferred wine to scotch or beer or port. She liked sweet wine to dry, and preferred red to white, even if she rarely indulged for fear of staining her teeth. She had a secret love of corn dogs and a not-so-secret love of really good cheesecake. 

She liked pills. Tiny, round white tablets she'd swallow with a sip of wine or a bit of tea. It kept her vapid and docile, complacent. She never fought with Howard over anything at all, and Tony knew - now - it was thanks to whatever those pills had been. She never complained when Howard hit her or screamed at her, never raised even a token protest when he invariably turned his abuse toward Tony as a more accessible and reactionary target. Tony had thought, for a long time, that she'd hated him. 

She wrote perfect cursive. Her ‘s’ was stylized with a fancy flourish, the ‘M’ taking up nearly twice as much space as an entire word all on its own. She'd loved the old ‘30s style phone Howard installed in the library for her. She didn't approve of much television, though an hour on weekdays and three hours on weekends was acceptable. She'd watched trashy soap operas in the late 80s, the kind where everyone was fucking everyone and someone died every other episode only to come back to life a few episodes later. She'd sobbed her heart out over  _ Bambi _ . 

She never once told him she loved him. 

Tony found another bottle of alcohol - vodka, no surprise there - in Natasha's old room. He cursed her for being stereotypical even as he upended the bottle. He made his way back to the workshop and collapsed on the couch with the bottle in his hand. 

“Would you like me to fabricate and assemble her, boss?” FRIDAY's quiet, almost timid question took Tony by surprise. 

He wasn't sure he was finished. It didn't matter, in the end. He could fix any bugs as they sprung up. 

“Sure,” he said with a half shrug. “Fire it up.” He drank another mouthful, then sat the bottle on the floor and promptly passed out. 

He dreamed of Ana and Jarvis. Of Maria and Howard. Of a very young Rhodey back at MIT. He dreamed of Obie. He dreamed of Sunset and Ty. He dreamed, and he didn't wake, even when he might have wished to. 

The ghosts were old and most were long dead and buried, but they were determined to haunt him. 

He remembered boarding school and the first boy to take his virginity. He remembered the first girl he'd done the same to, though he'd been infinitely more gentle and kind - until the following morning when he'd left her all alone. He remembered everything - a blessing to his work and a curse to his life. 

And when he woke, she was standing there, a smile on her face and a mug of coffee in her hand. He accepted it from her without a second of hesitation. 

“Mom,” he choked over a dry, cottony tongue and through a throat tight with unshed tears. 

“Good morning,  _ bambino _ ,” she said, cheerful and bright and so unlike anything he remembered. 


	3. T5: Whump

MOTHER was what Tony named the AI, eventually. He kept the Maria LMD down in the workshop with him for a few days, unwilling to let Rhodey see her. And it was perfect. Tony felt… loved, cherished. He felt like he belonged somewhere, belonged in someone's heart - and he was fine with that heart being composed of circuits and wires and other integrated technologies and a vastly complex AI. 

Rhodey left, eventually, as Tony knew he would. He had his own place now, in Albany. Just an hour's drive, as he'd reminded Tony before he left. It didn't matter. The communal areas of the compound were vacant now, and Tony was… oddly grateful. 

He showed Maria the piano. He listened to her play for hours. They watched movies together. They went for a long drive, and he gave her the wheel after a time. He'd thought for certain she would total the car and kill him - and he was ready to embrace death with open arms. But they arrived safely at the liquor store and he went in for his fresh supply. 

She cooked for him, all of Ana's best dishes. She tended to his burns and scrapes when he injured himself in the workshop. She kissed his forehead and told him she loved him - every single day, if not every hour. 

And then she began to pour his drinks for him, refilling his glass even when he was ready to call it a night. She'd found his supply of pain medications and offered them up like candies. Tony accepted, every single time. 

He mixed liquor and pills to shut his mind off. He snorted coke when he needed to function to build something new for SI - for Pepper. Maria listened to all his troubles and made soothing comments and pet his hair, hugged him. Loved him. 

She didn't ask him to change. 

Tony found himself slipping even further. Maria helped, though. She found ways to get more pills and went to get them herself. She bought all the booze he could ever need and more. She dealt with his dealers and anyone else who wanted to speak with him. He isolated himself from the world, and she kept him safe and warm and protected. 

FRIDAY's concerns were muted. She couldn't circumvent Maria. Tony ignored the world, even when Pepper called. Even when Rhodey tried to come down to the workshop. 

And then, somehow, Rhodey got in anyway. Tony could only vaguely recall that Rhodey had an override code to his lockdown command. Tony clung to Maria in desperation. 

“Don't make me go,” he begged, pleaded, fingers tearing the soft silk blouse she wore. 

“Shh,” Maria soothed, petting his hair. “You don't have to go anywhere, my darling boy. You don't need to do anything that makes you unhappy. Never again.” 

“Tony,” Rhodey said softly. When Tony looked at him, he looked… so sad. 

“She makes me happy.” It was an explanation. A justification. An excuse. It was whatever it needed to be. He just wanted Rhodey to understand. 

Rhodey shook his head and turned away. 

Tony sobbed into Maria's shoulder, further ruining the silk. She comforted him, sang to him, gave him more pills and more alcohol. 

“My sweet, lovely boy,” Maria sighed. “You are so very unhappy, aren't you?”

“Not with you,” Tony managed. 

“You will never be without me, never again.” 

Just when Tony heard a repulsor whine, soft, delicate hands cupped his cheeks. Maria kissed his forehead. She twisted. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can scream at me [here](https://shyglittercreature.tumblr.com/)


End file.
